Hour Glass
She produced an hour glass roughly the size of a thimble and set it on the counter in front of me. Our eyes met on a Tuesday morning at a street ministry where I was whipping up coffee drinks for the homeless.
“You have three minutes to say something,” she said.
I saw the sand falling.
It was the first challenge of its kind in my life and it originated from a younger reedy woman with a creased face who stood across the counter from me.
What a challenge!
“Where did you get that?” I said, pointing to the hour glass.
“It's a secret,” she said.
“What do you do with it?”
What I'm doing now.”
Say something!
I almost said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
I almost said, “Why are you so fucked up?”
I almost said, “How do you survive?”
I did say. “How are you?”
“Teach me something,” she said
What?
I scanned the room. Thirty homeless people were slumping in chairs at various impossible angles It looked like they'd been mowed down by machine gun fire.
“How about good posture?” I said.
This sounded stupid but was all that came to mind considering the bad postures all around me.
The woman turned sharply left and straightened her posture.
I laughed.
“Maybe you could teach the rest of us,” she said.
I laughed again.
“I don't think people in here need a lesson on good posture,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling. “Times up!”
I looked at the hour glass and it was true.
She picked it up and tucked it away somewhere on her person with an act of legerdemain. She then drifted away to a table and spilled into a seat.
Another volunteer had witnessed the exchange. I turned to him and said, “Should I have said something profound?”
“I don't know,” he said.
I said, “They probably didn't need to hear anything profound this morning.”
Was that true? Could any profundity conjured under pressure of a three-minute hour glass change the course of a homeless person's life right then and there or days, weeks, months, or years later?
Could a poem or song lyrics or scripture or a koan or a dressing down generate something profound?
It was too late for this shot and I know I'll never get another chance with her.
A coffee order came in and I went back to work.